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Quality entropy

posted on March 9, 2018

When people don’t care about what they make or sell its only a matter of time before the quality decreases.

Think about the craftsperson, hand delivering a chair they’ve worked on for hours. There is so much caring wrapped up in that item that the quality is going to be high. Quality of the item, quality of the service and the interaction with the customer.

Now fast forward ten years and the same craftsperson has built a business around their goods. There are hundreds of employees manufacturing, distributing and selling furniture pieces.

Even if the quality of the product itself stays the same, the overall quality of the interaction tends to decline. The sales person doesn’t know how the manufacturing process works, or all the intricacies involved in distribution. Plus, the furniture is made mostly by machines at this point. In some sense, the quality is more consistent, but the whole process has lost some magic.

The transition from handmade, hand delivered to mass produced inevitably leaves some gaps in empathy. The question is, how do you scale quality of interaction across the board? From production to sale, how can everyone in that chain feel ownership and act accordingly?

If you can deliver on that question, then you’re set up to grow something meaningful.